The obvious similarity of our developing bodies and the developing bodies of every other creature on our planet is  hard to miss.

But only if you don’t look!

Religious scolds who tell us to protect life from conception should include every other life form in that divine protection. It’s only fair to our primitive relatives. We’re all related on this tiny blue planet.

Love your babies, Earthlings!

This recently discovered running grouse is the first published print by Audubon

Researchers in PHILADELPHIA have found the first published illustration by John James Audubon, America’s most famous bird artist, after a decades long search for this prized but elusive work.

“It’s the holy grail of Audubon scholarship,” said Robert Peck. “It’s significant because it was at a significant turning point in his life.”

Audubon had made references to the illustration in his diaries, but it had never been seen until it was found on a sheet of sample images produced in 1824 by a New Jersey engraver who specialized in illustrations for banknotes.

A numismatic, or currency, historian  named Eric Newman along with Peck, who is a senior fellow with Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences and has spent the last decade looking for this long-lost image, were the discoverers of the print.

Its existence had been placed in doubt, including suggestions that Audubon may have lied about it to enhance his reputation before the publication of his masterwork “Birds of America,” starting in 1827.

Although unsigned, the image clearly belongs to Audubon with such details as the bird’s grassy habitat and other characteristic ornithological observations in the engraving.

So this is indeed the holy quail of  Audubon scholarship.

Artist Francesc Ruiz in The Graphic Unconscious

Philadelphia’s art schools can boast having some of the best print making facilities in the country it seems, each school offering unique enhancements for the student of printmaking from traditional to digital to letterpress facilities and faculty.

Upcoming Southern Graphics Conferences will be in Saint Louis in 2011 and Southern California in 2012!

For more photos from SGC Philadelphia 2010, check out the FlickR set posted here

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Bansky, an artist who focuses on social commentary with visual puns like a good poke in the eye, recently created a farmyard for fast food. Where else would those little chicken nuggets get there start?

Chickens have been on my mind lately, having spent a few weeks with 2 of them this summer. They have a lot of personality and according to some tests, score higher than monkeys. But the reality of how they are treated is very different. The 2006 film “Our Daily Bread” showed how tomatoes were handled with more care than live baby chicks. Just on their way to nuggethood, that’s all.

from Exit art

LEGOs defy logic and re-create Waterfall of MC Escher

Take that treehugger!

Even the world of politics ( yes, that IS Governor Sarah Palin!)

and of course, the Beginning of the World from my perennial favorite, the Brick Testament!